Leonico Tomeo’s Marginalia: Manuscript and Print in Sixteenth-Century Veneto

Abstract

This article centres on a connection between the manuscript reading marks of the Italian humanist Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (Venice 1456-Padua 1531), in the form of curved branches with sprouting leaves, and printed marginal notes found in early editions of his works printed in Venice and Paris. Known generally as a Greek scholar of Aristotle active at the University of Padua, Leonico had also an important role in contemporary intellectual and political debate, especially in relation to his many close English acquaintances. This article examines the occurrences of these unique marginal annotations in manuscript and print, and connects Leonico’s printed works to the printing and intellectual environment in Padua and Venice.

This article centres on the reading marks of the Italian humanist Niccolò Leonico Tomeo and on printed marginal notes. The manuscript reading mark and the printed annotations, both in the form of a branch with sprouting leaves, are found respectively in books that used to belong to Leonico, and in two separate editions of his works printed in Venice and Paris between 1525 and 1530. An Aristotelian scholar in Padua in the early sixteenth century, Leonico had many important links in European humanistic circles, being connected with contemporary scholars of international renown such as Desiderius Erasmus and Guillaume Budé; he was also closely linked to the community of English students and diplomats in Padua and Venice and is considered an influential figure in the process of first spreading humanistic ideas to the British Isles.¹

Leonico’s idiosyncratic manuscript annotations, which were faithfully reproduced in the early printed editions of his works, are traces of a writing (and reading) culture that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, still saw manuscript and print as connected, rather than opposing, modes of textual circulation. This, as noted by David McKitterick, is exemplified by the fact that several features associated with manuscript production and fruition (such as rubrication, marginal notes, and decorated capitals) can be seen to coexist with the printed word, especially in the early stages of print before 1530, in what was essentially an age of great experimentalism with a relatively new medium.² After the 1490s, many such features, some of which were essential or at least important for the proper fruition of manuscript volumes, can be found printed in books; this is especially evident in the case of books such as Leonico’s, which were intended as objects of learning and study, and for which the apparatus of marginal annotations was an essential part of their function, providing precious guidance for readers.³

Leonico and Greek Learning in Padua

Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (Venice 1456–Padua 1531) belonged to a family probably originating from Epirus (in modern Albania) that had settled in the Venetian territory in the second half of the fifteenth century; as of today, he is mostly known among scholars as the first reader of Aristotle in the original Greek for the university in Padua. In his youth, Leonico had studied Greek in Florence, Milan and Rome, before graduating in artibus from the University of Padua in 1485.⁴ By the end of the fifteenth century, Padua had started to acquire a strong international reputation for the teaching of Greek, thanks to the work of Demetrius Chalcocondyles, who had been appointed to the first chair of Greek in 1463.⁵ In 1497 Leonico, Chalcocondyles’ former pupil, was appointed in Padua as a reader of Aristotle, and he taught there until his death in March 1531. Leonico’s was a relatively minor appointment, as he was a lecturer in the Artistarum faculty, teaching students who read philosophy and medicine (‘maxime in philosophia et medicina’, as contemporary documents testify), and not in the more prestigious Juristarum. As his teaching was mostly directed to students pursuing degrees in arts and medicine, Leonico’s work was mainly focused on Aristotelian natural philosophy.⁶ However, his own broader scholarly interests included Latin and Greek classical literature, philosophy, and theology, displaying the kind of eclectic intellectual attitude that was common among humanist scholars. Leonico was also a collector of antiquities and curiosities, and his house was known as something of a Wunderkammer.⁷ Besides his university lectures, Leonico was also responsible for the private tuition of several noble English students in Padua and Venice, an unofficial post to which Leonico had been none the less appointed by the government of Venice.⁸ Among the young nobles that he trained in the studia humanitatis, reading philosophy and natural science along with classical literature, were two generations of English humanists, physicians, and diplomats, who would become highly influential in their homeland, both from a cultural and a political point of view.

Foreign students were a significant presence in sixteenth-century Padua: the international reputation of the city’s ancient university, mostly based on its internationally renowned law faculty and recently established Greek chair, coupled with its closeness to Venice and its relative religious freedom, made it an attractive destination for students and diplomats from all over Europe. By the end of the fifteenth century, foreign students could expect to find in Veneto a first-rate education and progressive intellectuals, as well as a welcoming, multilingual environment and a thriving international com- munity. The university was also starting to acquire a reputation for medical studies, and during the sixteenth century Padua would become a recognized centre for the new experimental turn in the practice of science, attracting scholars such as Galileo Galilei, Andreas Vesalius, and William Harvey. In England, Padua graduates had a disproportionately heavy influence on the development and diffusion of humanistic ideas between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.⁹ Leonico had a significant personal influence on the initial development of humanistic thought in the British Isles, and the impact of his teachings and scholarly works is evident in the composition of the libraries and the intellectual pursuits of his pupils and friends.¹⁰ Leonico maintained close epistolary contacts with his English students after they left Padua, many of whom had become personal friends, and created a network of humanist friendship bridging Veneto and England. Because his circle of friends included English diplomats, clergymen and statesmen, and although he never moved from Padua, Leonico seems to have been considered by the Venetian government as a sort of unofficial agent for what concerned the relationships between the Serenissima and the court of Henry VIII.

Leonico was also a translator and commentator of ancient and medieval writers, producing several commentaries on Aristotle, Plato, and Thomas Aquinas, as well as a book of Historiae and several original dialogues on different subjects. Most of his works known today were published in Venice towards the end of his life, at the insistence of his many friends.¹¹ Leonico joined forces with several printers in the area to publish both his own texts and editions of classical works, and appears to have collaborated in the Aldine edition of Aristotle’s texts. Although he was not officially affiliated with the Aldine academy in Venice, some of the books belonging to him have been shown to have provided the basis for several Aldine editions of Greek texts.¹² Leonico’s letters to his English friends, which are contained in the so-called ‘Rossianus’ manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome, make it clear that he took an interest, and often participated personally, in the publishing process of both his friends’ and his own works, as did many other humanists of his day.¹³ An example of this sort of friendly collaboration is offered by the epistolary dedication of his original work Dialogi, published in 1524, which occasioned a series of three letters between Leonico, Reginald Pole, the dedicatee of the Dialogi, and Thomas Lupset. The letters, all closely following each other in May 1524, accompany the dedication, which was sent to Pole and Lupset so they could ‘rewrite as necessary’ and then send it directly to the printer, who was anxiously waiting for it.¹⁴

Leonico’s reading marks and printed marginalia in Opuscula

A handwritten drawing of a curved, verdant branch can be found, among other places, in a copy of Xenophon’s Paraleipomena in Greek, printed in Venice by Aldo Manuzio in 1503 and now preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Fig. 1). In the catalogue of the Marciana, the marginal drawing has been identified as a distinctive reading mark by Leonico himself (‘suo tipico segno di rinvio, un rametto fogliato in funzione di richiamo’); he owned the volume at some point and used this particular design to highlight important sections in the books he was reading. The same volume (which includes two separate publications by Manuzio) contains Leonico’s ownership note, in Greek, written on the front endpaper.¹⁵ Eleonora Gamba also attributes this specific drawing to Tomeo, describing it as ‘a wavy leafy twig (or a garland) to signal longer notable passages’ (‘un ramoscello frondoso e ondulato (o ghirlanda) per segnalare i passi notevoli più ampi’).¹⁶ According to Gamba, the same drawing, sometimes in red ink, is found in several manuscripts and printed books annotated by Tomeo, where it presents the same features as the one found in the Marciana Xenophon.¹⁷

The use of idiosyncratic markings in the form of flowers or other figurative representations to highlight specific sections in both printed and manuscript texts was not unique to Leonico, and was still common in the humanist period. Examples of similarly distinctive reading marks have been found elsewhere in the works and books of other scholars over time, from Boccaccio to Francis Bacon.¹⁸ What makes Leonico’s branch-shaped mark so peculiar among the many other examples of similar occurrences dating to the humanist period is the fact that a marginal printed annotation showing a shape that is identical to Leonico’s mark can be found in printed editions of his works produced in Paris and Venice at the end of Leonico’s life, between 1525 and 1530.

Leonico’s miscellaneous work Opuscula is a small book in quarto format, containing 139 folios and profusely illustrated; it was printed in Venice cum privilegio by Bernardino Vitali in 1525, with an elaborate title page displaying a classically inspired woodcut decorative border featuring acanthus leaves, harpies and mathematical instruments, and titles printed in red ink.¹⁹ The editio princeps of the work is supposed to have been printed the year before, probably in Padua by an unknown printer.²⁰ Leonico’s Opuscula contains a commentary and annotations on two short pieces by Aristotle (indicated in the index as paraphrases of his De animalium motione and De animalium incessu), plus two original pieces (Quaestiones naturales and Conversio mechanicarum quaestionum Aristotelicis cum figuris) and a commentary on Proclus (Proclii Lytii explicatio Platonis). The book opens with a dedicatory letter to Giovanni Borgherini (fol. II^r–v, the volume is foliated throughout in Roman numerals), also a student of Leonico who was depicted with his master in a contemporary painting by Giorgione.²¹ In this text, Leonico describes how he finally decided to publish the paraphrases he composed while teaching (‘dum hoc in gymnasio proficerer’), which his friends compelled him to make public (‘Amicorum quorumdam suasus’). This first dedication is followed by three texts by Aristotle (‘De animalium progressu’, fols. III^r–XIV^r; ‘De animalium motu’, fols. XV^r–XXII^r; ‘Quaestiones Mechanicae’, fols. XXIII^r–LIV^v). The second section of the Opuscula, containing two of Leonico’s own texts, titled ‘Quaestiones Amatoriae’ (fols. LVI^r–LX^r) and ‘Quaestiones Naturales’ (fols. LXI^r–LXXIII^r), is separately dedicated to Lodovico Sambonifacio (fols. LV^r–v, LVI^r), a friend of both Leonico and of Cardinal Pietro Bembo.²² This second dedication mentions a conversation between Leonico himself and a common friend, Luca Bonfio, a Paduan humanist, which is cited as the origin for publishing his own ‘Quaestiones’.

The dedications to Borgherini and Sambonifacio in Opuscula, in the form of personal letters, confirm the important role of epistolary prefaces in maintaining personal and professional relations in the early humanistic environment, and provide a first impression of the kind of social circle behind Leonico’s printed works, made up of former and current students, fellow scholars and statesmen.²³ Leonico’s Opuscula contains several geometrical diagrams and illustrations exemplifying mathematical concepts, plus a series of printed marginal illustrations and annotations to guide the reader through the text. Mathematical and geometrical illustrations are clustered in the initial part of the work, containing explanations and paraphrases of Aristotle’s texts on natural philosophy. The first three texts also show a greater presence of marginal printed annotations, which appear often and summarize the content of different paragraphs; this difference in the presence of printed marginalia is evident when these first texts are compared to the texts that immediately follow them and are dedicated to Sambonifacio (Leonico’s own ‘Quaestiones’), which look rather bare in comparison. The fact that the first three pieces, dealing with Aristotle’s natural science, are more carefully illustrated, and more extensively commented upon, is an indication of their status within the Opuscula.²⁴

The last text in Leonico’s Opuscula is a commentary on, and translation of (the terms ‘traductio’, ‘conversio’ and ‘explicatio’ are all employed on the frontispiece and title page), Proclus’ commentary on Plato concerning the generation of the soul (‘Platonis ex Timaeo de animorum generatione’, fols. LXXV^r–CXXXIX^v). This text contains the most diverse range of printed textual additions in the entire volume. The choice of this specific text from Plato is highly significant, as it exemplifies Leonico’s personal propensity towards Platonism. Moreover, the prominence of the ‘Timaeo’ in Leonico’s collection, reflected in the number and quality of its marginal notes, echoes the central role of Plato’s works in the contemporary philosophical debate centred on the immortality of the soul.²⁵ The text of Leonico’s ‘Timaeo’ displays several typographical marks suggesting that this single piece may have been considered either more significant or more interesting than other texts in the same volume. In Vitali’s edition, the ‘Timaeo’ was given a separate title page (fol. LXXV^r) and separate pagination, and presents several different kinds of additions, ranging from geometrical illustrations to marginal annotations, the latter often represented by Greek words and by references to other classical authors. In addition to these, and differently from preceding texts, the text of ‘Timaeo’ also contains several printed manicules (fols. CI^r, CXXIII^v, CXXIIII^v, CXXXIII^r, and CXXXV^v). Derived from earlier scribal practice, the use of manicules to highlight the salient passages in a text was common in the humanistic period, in the context of both print and manuscript. Like many other printed examples of this type of mark, the ones displayed here show a standard design, with the wrist extended vertically and one single pointed finger.²⁶ More interestingly, this last section of Opuscula displays a printed marginal illustration in the form of a curved tree-branch complete with sprouting leaves, which has been used in several places with a similar function of calling attention to significant parts of the text (fols. CVIII^v, CXXVII^v, and CXXX^v; Fig. 2). The design of this printed marginal note is identical to the manuscript note found in the Marciana Xenophon that used to belong to Tomeo, and in many other books that similarly passed through his hands. In distinction to the manicules, which point to specific lines, the verdant branch here appears to refer to a larger section of the page.

The same image of a verdant branch was also reproduced in a later reissuing of Leonico’s works, produced in 1530 by Simon de Colines, when the Opuscula were printed in Paris. Colines’ edition of Leonico is in folio format, which accounts for some differences in the layout and appearance of illustrations and marginal notes between this edition and Vitali’s. Additionally, in the Colines edition, the ‘Timaeo’ (pp. 71–126) does not have a separate pagination or a separate title-page, but presents line-numbers and is paginated coherently with the rest of the volume. On the other hand, Colines’ edition of the Opuscula reproduces several of the typographical choices in the Venetian copy, from similar decorative initials to the diagrams and marginalia. However, manicules are not present, and the curved branch design is only used twice, on pp. 99 and 115, roughly corresponding in placing to fols. CVIII^v and CXXVII^v in Vitali’s edition. The colophon on p. 126 dates the printing of the Paris copy to September 1530, about half a year before Leonico’s death in Padua. In the same year 1530, Colines appears to have issued the text of the Opuscula twice, once as a stand-alone title and then again combined with two other of Leonico’s works, his commentary of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia and his original Dialogi. The text of the Opuscula seems to be exactly the same in both cases, including the title page and colophon; in the combined Parva of 1530, the Opuscula maintains its original pagination, is listed separately and advertised as a recent publi- cation (‘nuper in lucem aedita’) on the frontispiece of the volume.²⁷ As for Colines’ reasons for printing the Opuscula, they can easily be ascribed to the nature of Leonico’s text, which was close to Colines’ own interests and market as a printer. Colines was a ‘libraire juré, a select printer to the uni- versity in Paris’ and mostly printed scholarly texts, such as those ‘used in the study of the liberal arts, theology, and medicine, along with a range of titles of interest to a broader audience’.²⁸ Colines’ new Italic and Greek types, which appeared in Paris from the beginning of the 1530s, would prove highly influential in French printing, and remained in continuous use for more than 200 years.²⁹ Interestingly, this information thus places Leonico’s Paris Opuscula at the beginning of what has been termed ‘a revolution’ and ‘a turning-point in the history of [French] typography’.³⁰

The two printed versions of the curved branch design described in this article were produced independently, as is evident from their general shape, which is quite different. The types were almost surely made to order, as the design is quite unique and does not seem to have been used elsewhere. In both cases, the printing does not at first sight look as though it was executed using woodcuts, as no marginal lines can be discerned such as are common features of woodcut printing. However, it is possible that, in both cases, the branch designs could have been printed in separately from the main text, and at a later time.³¹ This kind of printed mark is very different from other book-related images, such as the kind of type ornament that has been termed as ‘printed flowers’ or ‘printer’s lace’ and has been described by Juliet Fleming in a series of articles and essays.³² Discussing type ornaments, Fleming describes them as ‘printed designs made from ordinary letter types that bear decorative elements instead of letter forms’. They first became popular, according to Fleming, in the middle of the sixteenth century, when printers in Europe, and especially in Italy and France ‘began to experiment with the use of ordinary, moveable types, which carried not a letter, but a decorative element’.³³ These were then used in series, to create repetitive patterns with a decorative meaning.

In distinction to the kind of ornamentation discussed by Fleming, the branches found in Leonico’s books and works are not serial designs, but unique pieces, reproducing a specific manuscript mark and placed in the book to signal specific passages. As such, they provide the reader with significant and relevant information. In this, the function of these printed designs on the page is identical to the role they had in Leonico’s own reading practice, i.e. to draw the reader’s attention to larger passages that are particularly significant, as opposed to printed manicules, which in the same volumes point instead to specific lines of text. The printed marginal notes depicting the curved branch, although of a similar shape in the two versions of the Opuscula printed by Vitali and Colines, are not identical, and were certainly executed using different tools, as is suggested by the many subtle differences in their respective designs. Firstly, the leaves sprouting from the branch are placed in a slightly different position; moreover, the bottom of the curved branch terminates in a thicker stem in Colines, while Vitali’s lighter lines better approximate the manuscript version of the same design found in the Marciana Xenophon. This is not surprising, as Simon de Colines also worked as a punchcutter, and often cut his own types, which were remarkable for their quality.³⁴ Thus, Vitali’s branches may provide evidence indicative of a closer relation of the Venice copy of the Opuscula to the manuscript version of the same mark, and possibly of Leonico’s collaboration in designing the marginal apparatus of his own printed works.

The Paris editions of Leonico’s works were produced towards the end of Leonico’s lifetime and close to Vitali’s own period of activity, indicating perhaps a connection between Colines’ work and Leonico’s production as printed in Padua and Venice.

Leonico’s Network and the Opuscula

The Venetian edition of Leonico’s Opuscula was produced within an environment that was fairly close to Leonico’s own professional milieu and social circles. The printer, Bernardino Vitali, was active with his brother Matteo in Venice from 1495 until about 1540. According to Lucia Nadini, Bernardino and Matteo Vitali, ‘among the major names in contemporary Venetian printing’,³⁵ originally came from Albania and were active partici- pants in the life of the Albanian community in Venice, suggesting a point of contact between Vitali and Leonico, whose family similarly originated from Epirus. Moreover, Vitali and Leonico apparently had several acquaintances in common, such as the grammarian Gabriel Trifone, a close friend of Pietro Bembo and through him also well known to Leonico, and Marino Bitichemio, who is mentioned in passing in the letters between Leonico and Reginald Pole.³⁶ The beginnings of the printing career of the Vitali brothers were closely connected to the university environment in Padua, and specifically to Aristotelian philosophy and medicine, a field that incorporated Leonico’s own interests.³⁷ The printers and the scholar seem to have moved in similar intellectual circles in Veneto, and the Vitali brothers can be seen printing a number of books that are close to Leonico’s own production in terms of their themes and intellectual provenance. A useful comparison can be drawn between Leonico’s Opuscula and a somewhat similar volume printed by Bernardino and Matteo Vitali around the same period, a miscellaneous work by the scholar Ambrogio Leone from Nola containing more than four hundred quaestiones related to natural science and medical matters.³⁸ Leone’s volume is similar to that by Leonico in being a miscellany of different matters relating to natural sciences, and displays a similar layout in the frontispiece, bordered by classical motives and with the title printed in red. Leone’s quaestiones are also clarified through the use of mathematical illustrations, some of which are remarkably similar to the one found in Leonico’s Opuscula. Several other titles can be found, printed in the early 1520s by Bernardino Vitali, either alone or in collaboration with his brother, that can be ascribed to similar social and intellectual milieux when compared to Leonico’s works, and that display a somewhat similar layout. Among these titles are Erasmus’ Moria, Niccolò Leoniceno’s commentaries on Galen and Hippocrates, and a collection of Aristotelian works edited by Pietro Alcioino. Leoniceno (with whom Leonico has often been confused in the past) was a physician and humanist from the nearby town of Lonigo, who often collaborated with Manuzio, while Alcioino was also part of Manuzio’s circle in Venice.³⁹ As mentioned earlier, Leonico is also known to have collaborated with Manuzio in the printing of several Greek volumes, and several of the books that used to belong to Leonico were used as the basis for Aldine editions.⁴⁰ All these occurrences suggest that the Vitali brothers were electing to print humanistic and Greek texts on medicine and natural sciences and connected with their local (Paduan and Venetian) circles, and aiming for a specific look and feel in their production.

A further connection between Vitali and Leonico is represented by the latter’s network of English contacts, which has been briefly mentioned above. A few years earlier, in 1522, Bernardino Vitali had printed Richard Pace’s De avaritia, a translation from Plutarch, and in the same year also brought forth a reprint of a larger volume titled Plutarchi opuscula, containing several short pieces translated by Pace.⁴¹ Pace’s Opuscula, prominently dedicated to Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, another alumnus of Padua, shows close ties with the circle of Leonico’s students, and it has been suggested that the English diplomat might have intended the volume to ‘stand as a monument to his tutor in Padua’, that is to say, Leonico.⁴² As mentioned before, Pace had been a student of Leonico, and remained a personal friend of his, as is evident from Leonico’s letters contained in the ‘Rossianus’ manuscript, lamenting that diplomatic duties kept the ambassador away from the life of the mind.⁴³ A year after the publi- cation of his own translations from Plutarch, Pace had an important role in facilitating the publication of Leonico’s Parva Naturalia, the latter’s first work printed with Vitali. On 23 June 1523, a motion was made in the Venetian Senate, ‘that as a favour at the request of the ambassador from England, Dom. Nicol Leonico be allowed to print his commentaries in parva naturalibus’.⁴⁴ Leonico’s Parva naturalia was printed by Bernardino and Matteo Vitali, with a dedication to Pace, and displays a layout similar to what is found in the later Opuscula, featuring decorative initials, geometrical illustrations, and abundant printed marginal annotations.

Thus, the English ambassador’s initial efforts seem to have had a significant role in bringing about a fruitful association between the Venetian printers and the Paduan scholar, and may have provided the initial profes- sional introduction in a collaboration that would influence the shape of the printed traditio of Leonico’s works in Italy and abroad. Overall, it is extremely possible that the printed version of this design was developed after Leonico’s own personal notes and may have involved Leonico’s direct collaboration with the printer, Bernardino Vitali, who was known to Leonico via a series of personal and professional connections. In the case of Leonico’s works, such unique printed marginal annotations represent material traces of an intellectual and social community involving one’s fellow scholars and countrymen alongside Venetian and foreign printers and politicians.

Finally, and in a more general sense, the curved branches found in Leonico’s books and printed works also represent tangible reminders of the substantial overlap between print and manuscript culture in the early sixteenth century, when the boundary between the two forms of written knowledge was still highly porous. The printed branches found in editions of Leonico’s works have some features in common with other kinds of printed ornamentation, such as the kind of markings ‘used individually, as single spot designs’ that were intended to ‘mark divisions in writing long before printing began’ and to signal other kinds of significant information.⁴⁵ Marginal designs like those found in the early copies of Leonico’s printed works are unique examples of the type of printed marginal annotations that, especially in their more commonly used versions represented by markings such as manicules, asterisks and other common shapes, are a common sight in books from the hand-press period. In the initial stages of printing ‘there was a great deal of continuity between manuscript and print publication’ and many printed books can be seen imitating the form of manuscripts, or at least some of their features.⁴⁶ As such, the purpose of printed marks was ‘to give readers more familiar with manuscripts some approximation of the ornamented pages they had been used to when they now opened a printed book’.⁴⁷ Moreover, such specific examples of annotations represent attempts at reproducing a personal aspect of the reading experience, i.e. the practice of annotating books, which often involved elaborate personal systems of marks, which had developed a remarkable degree of sophisti- cation by the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the system of annota- tions in printed texts (in the margins and elsewhere) was not yet as stable nor as advanced; it was, however, gradually becoming more so, and not least thanks to the contribution of printers such as Aldo Manuzio, who was directly connected to Leonico’s circle. In this phase, the printing world appears to have been highly permeable to influences from manuscript cul- ture, which could, as in this case, manifest themselves in the temporary adoption of idiosyncratic systems of annotation that had their roots in the personal reading experiences of a specific author.

Footnotes